junction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,
sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my
race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast
down your bucket where you are." Cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic
service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to
bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear,
when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the
negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing
is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our
greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions
of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put
brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the
substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can
prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not
at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our
opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign
birth and strange tongues and habits for the prosperity of the South,
were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down
your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions
of negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have
tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your
firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without
strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests,
builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasure from
the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent
representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your buckets
among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these
grounds, and to ed